COUNCILLORS have sided with an independent inspector’s report and refused village green status for Germany Beck in Fulford.

Local residents who make up the Friends of Germany Beck had applied to councillors to register the land as a village green.

That could have effectively prevented proposals by house builder Persimmon to build 700 homes on the site, as the village green would have been on the route of the main access road on to the site.

But at a public inquiry, an independent inspector had already recommended that registration of the land as a green should be refused and councillors were told they would have to have an exceptional reason for going against that recommendation.

Karin de Vries, a Friend of Germany Beck, tried to persuade councillors to defer their decision so the Friends could seek further legal advice.

She said: “We have tried to convey that we think there are serious flaws in the inspector’s report and that procedural problems exist.

“We think that his report is very biased and unjustly favours the objectors’ evidence over that of the applicants.”

The councillors were told that the Friends believed there had been a lack of consistency in the way evidence from both applicants and objectors was dealt with and that evidence had been ignored.

But the councillors were told that to reject the inspector’s recommendation they would have to decide it was so unreasonable that no reasonable inspector could have made it.

They did not feel that this was the case.

Coun David Horton said the public inquiry had taken nine days, which was a “considerable amount of time to look at this”.

He said: “To go away from the inspector’s recommendation we would have to have clear and robust reasons and I find it very hard to find those reasons.”

All five councillors on the committee agreed to reject the application to register Germany Beck as a village green.

Speaking after the meeting, Mrs de Vries said the Friends were very disappointed and would be looking at what options were now available to them.